


Whispers at Sunset

by Silverclare33



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied Smut, avoiding necessary conversations with sex, minor fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 05:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12149943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silverclare33/pseuds/Silverclare33
Summary: Takes place at the end of s2e1, after they all get back to the homestead from Black Badge. Instead of walking away to brood, Doc takes Wynonna up on her offer to come inside for a shower. He wants to talk. She does not.Written as a commission for the amazing @syd





	Whispers at Sunset

“You can come in if you want,” she said, giving him that look that drove him crazy. The flare of heat in those grey eyes, the very slight upturning of her mouth at the corner that made her cheek dimple.

The word  _ cute  _ was not one he’d expect to be able to apply to Wyatt’s heir, and yet somehow it fit her. She was tougher than nails, twice as mean, fierce as a bear in spring - and also very cute. 

“I’m gonna go take a shower.”

How easy would it be to say yes? Doc thought about it - thought of the both of them slicked up with hot steaming water, thought of her gasping and sighing his name -

Doc swallowed and a muscle in his jaw twitched almost invisibly as he ducked his head and touched the brim of his hat. A chill wind sighed through the farmyard, bringing the scent of snow and stone and pines from further up in the mountains.

He could say yes, and go inside and no doubt have a  _ wonderful  _ time with this woman.

But….but. 

No, he decided, he couldn’t. There was just too much between them that made this a terrible idea. He was getting too involved, frankly, and he had to pull back before one or both of them got hurt too bad for a bottle of whiskey to fix.

“I’ll leave you to it then,” he said. The charm and courtesy his mama had drilled into him as a boy served him well now, whether it was for getting what he wanted or hiding what he felt. Sometimes both. Frequently both. 

He pushed away the shred of thought that brought up Alice Holliday, of what she might think of her son a century and a half in the future. There was more than enough guilt gnawing at his heart without thinking of her.

Was it his imagination, or did Wynonna look disappointed when he turned her down? No, she couldn’t be. He was imagining things again. He’d seen how she kissed Dolls at Bobo’s ball - sure, maybe the good old Deputy Marshall had kissed her first, but she was certainly no unwilling participant. And the way she’d asked about him today, the way she’d been so driven to search for him….

She gave him a tight-lipped smile and closed the door as he stepped down off the porch and headed for the barn. 

He lit a cigarette and took a long drag, staring moodily across the flat white plain of snow that stretched up to mountains in the distance. Maybe things would be different if he’d been around for more of the heirs, if he’d not been at the bottom of a well for the past hundred and thirty years. But he was. Wyatt had died in California when Doc’d been in the well over 40 years. He’d died believing his best friend worse than dead. 

The sting of that, it wasn’t the kind that dulled with time. 

And now, sometimes when he looked at her it was like a fist to the gut. The way her eyes flickered like stormcloud flames, that particular tilt of her head - it was astonishing how much she reminded him of his best friend. She could be his daughter instead of his great-something-granddaughter. Most of the time - most of it - he could look at Wynonna and see just Wynonna, just a vicious, battered, brilliant woman with a mouth as sharp as his. 

Other times, not quite so much. Other times he looked at her and felt a chill shock through him. She’d laugh, or move her hands a certain way, or point Peacemaker right at the forehead of some revenant and just for one second - he’d be back in the past, looking right at Wyatt. It was chilling how like him she was, when clearly she’d never met him. 

Sometimes looking at her made his lungs hurt like they used to when he was dying. He’d feel that same hollow, aching need way down deep in his chest and then he’d start drinking  _ hard  _ because the only thing that could fill that was dead in the ground or didn’t want him.

He sighed, squinting over the range again as he flicked ash from the end of his smoke. 

There was a thought brewing in his mind. Well. Perhaps not so much of a thought as an  _ idea,  _ which was never a good thing. 

“Don’t you do it, John Henry,” he muttered under his breath, eyes narrowed. “Do not go into that house.”

He closed his eyes and took a breath of the late winter air. But rather than cool his mind like he’d intended, all it did was make him think of the soft warmth of Wynonna’s skin sliding against his, milky-pale and soft as pearl silk -

He clenched his jaw and groaned, rolling his eyes toward the cotton-grey sky. 

To hell with it and back, he was going into the house. 

He crossed the yard in long strides, boots crunching through the remains of yesterday’s snow.

_ “You can come in if you want,”  _ she’d said, damn that woman, he  _ did  _ want to. Waverly and her lady-love had vanished, thankfully, so he eased open the door and stepped right inside. 

…..

In hindsight, maybe he  _ should  _ have knocked after all.

Thinking herself alone - naturally, since her sister was out and he himself had turned her down - the first thing he saw when he stepped inside was….more of Wynonna than he’d bargained for. Women today, he’d found, wore far less in the way of underclothes than they had in his day. Not that he was complaining. 

For a moment he was mesmerized - his gaze held by the perfect smoothness of her curved hips and stomach, the muscles over her ribs and those long lean thighs like a thoroughbred that might’ve looked comical on anyone else, but just made Wynonna look elegant. 

“Hey!” she snapped, throwing the bundle of her clothes right at his head. “The hell, Doc? What happened to ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ you perv?” 

He’d caught the bundle of clothes instinctively, but something stopped him from answering now. “I - uh, Wynonna, we -” he stopped. Sweet Christmas, he hadn’t been  _ nervous  _ about a woman since he was sixteen years old, for god’s sake. 

She quirked an eyebrow, the playful smile still on her lips - but she looked a touch worried now. Great. He was scaring her.

“Listen, Wynonna, we gotta talk, you and me.”

_ Fuck.  _ He saw the flare of sudden panic in her eyes like a spooked horse.  _ Now why did I say that?  _ He thought. 

Her hand went automatically to the pendant that hung by her collarbones - an unconscious habit he wasn’t sure she knew about, but he noticed it every time something frightened her. 

“Whoa-ho-ho, no,” she laughed nervously, stepping back and shaking her head. “Did those black badge goons spike your flask with something, Doc? I can’t - I am  _ so very  _ not ready for this conversation, thank you - I think I need a drink, you want one?” 

She moved to step past him toward the kitchen.

He really did not know what instinct it was that fired to make him reach out and grab her arm. 

“Wynonna,” he said again, voice low and rough. He didn’t say  _ please,  _ but the silent echo of it hung in the air anyway. 

Her eyes flicked up and down over over him, the scorch of her gaze making him feel more naked than she was. This woman, he thought. All contradictions. Childlike and bitter, all sharp angles and soft curves, vicious and sweet. And lord almighty, she was hotter than hell itself. He caught his breath and looked down to meet her eyes.

If he were to be honest with himself, he would not object to getting lost in those eyes forever. Mentally he scoffed. Since when did he write fancy poetry?

“Yes?” 

She didn’t whisper, but there was still a husky, bedroom quality to her voice that made his mouth run dry. She stepped closer to face him, angling her body so he could see practically  _ everything.  _

Shouldn’t he stop her? He asked himself, and though he knew there was definitely a reason why he should (maybe several reasons) he could not call to mind a single solitary one. 

“Yes, Doc?” she whispered again, quirking up an eyebrow just the way Wyatt used to. “You sure you don’t wanna join me for that shower? You look like you could use one.” Somehow it sounded less like an insult, and more like a taunting invitation.

The muscles of his stomach clenched and tightened, something wild and hot stirring to life way down deep in his gut. God _ damn,  _ this woman would be the death of him one day. With the way she was looking at him, it was all he could do not to shove her back against the nearest wall and love her until she cried out his name.

Fuck it. Nobody said he had to be strong all the time. In answer he took off his hat, shrugged out of his coat and tossed both onto the couch. 

Even if guilt still pressed on his gut, the brilliant smile she gave him right then was more than enough to make up for it as she surged forward to kiss him. Her eyes closed and she inhaled like it was the first real breath she’d had in a while, as her deft hands skimmed over his chest and made short work of tossing aside his shirt, and then the rest of their clothes. He let go then, closing his own eyes as he kissed her hungrily and they stumbled almost drunkenly toward the bathroom where the shower was already running.

………

Wynonna lay dozing on top of the tangled sheets, her eyes half closed. It felt like….almost like every joint she had had been unknit, but not painfully so. The aftershocks of their shower together still buzzed pleasantly in her veins; her breath was so slow she could easily have been sleeping. Behind her, she could feel Doc’s solid, warm presence, a comfort unlike anything she’d ever really known. Sure, she wasn’t gonna lie - she’d had some pretty fuckin’ spectacular sex in her day, and Doc definitely ranked pretty high - but there was something else to him too. Something alien, foreign, but not entirely unpleasant. She had the uncomfortable urge to poke at the whatever-it-was like a sore tooth. To be her usual shitstorm of a self and pull at whatever fragile threads were connecting them until the whole damn thing came apart in her hands.

Voices drifted through her mind, taunting, barbed. Gus, concerned but still hurting her -  _ “I love you, Wynonna, but you’re as broken as they come.” _

Sheriff Nedley, giving her that hostile stare.  _ “Haven’t the people you love suffered enough?” _

She wasn’t good for him. Or anyone, for that matter, but she especially didn’t feel good enough to be what Doc clearly thought she was. Sometimes she’d catch him looking at her, when he thought she wouldn’t notice, and the look she saw there scared the ever-loving piss out of her. She could see the reflection of herself in his eyes and it was totally, terrifyingly not real. 

_ Maybe I should just tell him,  _ she thought, but recoiled at the notion. What was she even gonna tell him anyway?  _ Hey Doc, I know you’re a 130-year-old gunslinger known for bending the law, but guess what? I’m in love with - _

Her train of thought screeched to a blinding halt, searing smoke through her brain.  _ Do not finish that thought, Wynonna,  _ she warned herself.  _ Don’t you fuckin’ dare.  _

A memory rose in her mind like a snake - being locked up in that hospital, told over and over and over again that she was crazy. Finally they’d just resorted to zapping her every time she told the truth.

The truth…..

_ Was  _ she in love with him? And what would he even think if she did tell him that? He was Doc goddamn Holliday. It’s not like they could ever have any kind of future together. No, it was better - safer, less damaging for everyone involved - if they kept whatever this was that they had strictly on a physical level.

That wasn’t so bad, was it? Come on, not everyone had the ability to give each other such a spectacularly good time  _ every time.  _

But even as she lay with her back to his chest pretending to be asleep, her own thoughts started to smell more and more like total, grade-A bullshit.

…...

As he lay beside her, drifting in and out of that special sort of bliss only she could bring him, Doc reached forward lazily and traced patterns on the skin of her side, gentle and tender. He loved the way she’d lay on her side, and the dip from her hip bone down to where it met the bottom of her ribs. As he trailed his fingers over her skin, he was mostly sure she’d fallen asleep by now. Though it was very lovely how those shivers rose wherever he touched.

“I know I’m talkin’ to thin air here,” he murmured, playing with a twist of brown hair, still damp from the shower. “But I figure it’s practice, see? Cause if there’s one thing I know - nothin’ stays hidden forever. Nothing.” He sighed and moved to brush her hair back, listening to the soft sound of her breath.

“Thing is, Wynonna - I love you way too goddamn much to pretend this is just fun for much longer. Now either I’m gonna grow a set and tell you this for real, or it’ll come out on its own somehow.”

Still she slept. Good. He wanted to get this all sorted in his mind before he told her. 

“You know I’ve never been the settling type, darlin’, but I think for you I just might.” He sighed and shook his head. “Now whether or not my….feelings are reciprocated is another story entirely - and if they’re not, I’ll live with it. Because, Wynonna - when I look at you, when I hold you, the dark goes away, and it don’t with anyone else.”

He let his voice trail off into silence in the still air, a pale gold winter sunset shining in through her bedroom window. 

“Anyway. That’s my two cents’ worth on that. Maybe next time I’ll be able to say it for real.” He held her close to his chest for a second, letting the scent of her clean hair comfort him. And then he stood up, stumbled back into his clothes, and kissed the back of her neck before he headed for the door. 

“Until next time, Miss Earp.”

……

For those long, long minutes after he left she lay still, unmoving - still staring right at the wall and letting the room grow dark around her. And as she lay there, every word he’d said to her echoed like bellows in her mind.

 


End file.
